


Many Springs Feed This Well

by LuxObscura



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:24:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxObscura/pseuds/LuxObscura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thinks, acute myocardial infarction.  She thinks pulmonary embolism.  There is one word she does not think.<br/>Grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many Springs Feed This Well

It hurts.  It hurts somewhere deep in the middle of Molly’s chest, a constant squeezing, a tightness that persists long after she’s cried herself dry.  

She thinks, _acute myocardial infarction._ She thinks _pulmonary embolism._   There is one word she does not think.

 _Grief_.

Because grief isn’t something she should be feeling.  She imagines herself standing next to John, next to Lestrade, perhaps even next to Mycroft and being dwarfed by their sense of loss.  Because they don’t know what Molly knows.

Yet doesn’t that make it worse, somehow?  Their world seems so simple to Molly (and God, is this how Sherlock feels all the time, even just one tiny part?).  Sherlock was alive and now he is dead, however inexplicable or obscure his motives.  Alive, dead.  On, off.

They didn’t see what Molly saw.  

Sherlock naked on the slab, unconscious, scraped red-raw in places, blood all through his hair.  Molly wants to draw him a warm bath, sponge him off gently, do this one last kindness before—  But there isn’t time.  She sluices him off with cold water from the spray nozzle, towels him off, wraps him in blankets, cracks the ammonia capsule under his nose.  He comes to with a gasp, bats her hand away, coughs, gags, sits up, wavers, swings his legs over the side and then stops, swaying minutely and tangled in blankets.

“Concussion.  You probably have a concussion.  Bruised ribs.  Probably not cracked but hard to tell without a proper x-ray and I can’t—“

Sherlock coughs again, winces, splints his ribs with one hand, waves Molly off with the other.  “Never mind, Molly.  Clothes?”

Molly pulls a plain brown paper sack out from under one of the worktops and hands it over.  “Can I get you a coffee?  Soup?  Only you’re so cold you’re blue Sherlock and—“ _and you looked properly dead for a bit there and I couldn’t—_ “…are you all right?”

Sherlock’s distentangling himself from the blankets now, unselfconscious in his nudity, pulling pants and socks and a vest from the sack.

“I’m dead, Molly.  I’m dead but my heart still beats, my blood still pumps, my brain still crashes on in top gear, but _Sherlock Holmes_ is dead.”

“If I ask for you tomorrow, shall I find you a very g-grave man?”  Molly tries to smile but her voice stutters and squeaks and her attempt at humor dies on her lips.  

Sherlock turns his head to look at her, hem of the vest sliding down to cover the abrasions on his torso.  His eyes narrow and for a second Molly comes over very warm with the full weight of Sherlock’s regard bearing down on her.  She twists her fingers together, stares at them, noticing a smear of Sherlock’s blood on the knuckle of her left index finger.  She’ll wash it later.

“I’m dead, Molly.  With all of the anonymity, privileges and inconveniences that affords.  I’ve bought myself time, enough to get out of England and buy myself more time, enough to ensure my freedom and that of everyone else.  The possibilities—!”  

Sherlock yanks the rest of the clothes on.  The look is completed with a beanie, an anorak and a cheap pair of sunglasses.  Sherlock affects a slouch and suddenly seems very much not like Sherlock at all.

Molly’s heart clenches and her stomach drops.  It is, for a second, very much like Sherlock _is_ dead and this stranger is all that remains.  Then he straightens again and pulls off the sunglasses, hanging them off the neck of his shirt.  And just like that Sherlock is back and Molly can breathe again.  

 _Is this what it’s going to be like?_ she wonders.  _For weeks, months, maybe_ years _, not knowing if Sherlock is alive or dead?  Maybe… maybe_ never _knowing?_ She takes a step towards him at the same moment he moves to close his distance to her.  They each stutter to a stop.  Molly reaches out a hand awkwardly and it hangs between them like all the things they aren’t going to say.

“Well,” she tries anyway, “good luck.  Be safe.  Uhm.  Please don’t get killed uh… uhm for real.”  Her smile feels ill.

Sherlock considers her for a moment, takes her hand and then pulls her into an embrace.  “Thank you, Molly.”  His lips brush lightly against her temple, his hands twist in the cheap synthetic of her lab coat.  Molly is lost in the sandalwood smell of Sherlock that even a cold shower and new clothes can’t erase.  And then he’s gone, slouched and with a shuffling gait, moving out of the doors of the morgue towards the loading dock.

Gone.

Gone.

 _But not dead_ , she reminds herself emphatically.

_But would I know if he were?_

_And that’s the worst of it_ , she thinks as her throat clenches and unclenches around sobs that are so hoarse they’re hardly more than harsh movement of breath.  _To them he’s gone and they’ve been grieving all this time.  But I know_ he might not be _but I’ll never know the truth.  I envy them their certainty._

Molly clutches a tissue and rocks back and forth, perched on the edge of her sofa at home.  She can’t really remember how many days have gone by.  She’d been granted some compassionate leave and it didn’t seem like anyone was looking for her yet. There was time still.  Time to drown in this well of pain that had opened inside her, swallowing her heart and filling her lungs until almost no air could move in them.  

_I always thought drowning in uncertainty was a metaphor but I think… I think…_

She forces herself to sit up straight and take a deep breath.  Then another.  Then another.  The tightness in her chest eases.  Toby headbutts her in the calf and she reaches down to scratch behind his ears.  The sensation grounds her somewhat.  She drops the crumpled tissue on the coffee table and picks up her mobile to check the date.  Her phone informs her that only two days have passed.  No texts.  No missed calls.  There’s another surge of black water up into her lungs and throat — _tightness, pain, breathless_ — and she thinks of EKGs and blood tests and CT scans but she knows deep inside that they will find nothing wrong.  There’s no test that anyone could run that would tell her when to grieve, when to stop worrying and hoping.  Even time, which she’s been told heals all wounds, is her enemy now, stretching out before her; vast, unknowable, inscrutable.  

Her phone dings in her hand and she looks at it reflexively.  Greg is taking John to the pub and he thinks Molly should come.  _Even if we all sit in silence we’re getting out of our bloody flats and our own heads.”_  

Molly ponders this.  Sherlock didn’t need to tell her how important it was to keep his secret.  How can Molly spend time with two of the people Sherlock died to protect (because Sherlock Holmes is dead — his body and mind continue on but that man cannot be alive).  Molly thinks about tightness in the chest and hearts pounding too hard and raw throats and red eyes.  She thinks and she compares and when she eventually texts Greg back _Yes_ it is because she is certain that fear, uncertainty and grief all draw from the same well of pain and are indistinguishable when they are drawn to the surface.  Hiding in plain sight with Greg and John may be the only comfort she has for years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> So in a post completely unrelated to anything Sherlock, a friend used the phrase “well of manpain” in her tags. And for whatever reason my brain went, “Well of woman pain! Who has one of those? I bet Molly Hooper does! I should write about it before I get Joss’d by S3!” So I opened my brain and this fell out. It is unbeta’d and unbritpicked and not even checked for internal consistency. Anyone who wants to help on that front is welcome to msg me. Included here on AO3 for the sake of completeness.


End file.
